The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Review
by Ryan Smith on November 7, 2013 9:01 AM ESTMetro: Last Light
As always, kicking off our look at performance is 4A Games’ latest entry in their Metro series of subterranean shooters, Metro: Last Light. The original Metro: 2033 was a graphically punishing game for its time and Metro: Last Light is in its own right too. On the other hand it scales well with resolution and quality settings, so it’s still playable on lower end hardware.
For the bulk of our analysis we’re going to be focusing on our 2560x1440 results, as monitors at this resolution will be what we expect a single GTX 780 Ti to be primarily used with. A single card does have the necessary horsepower to drive a 4K monitor on its own, but only at lower quality settings. Even as powerful as GTX 780 Ti is, a pair of them will be needed to get good framerates out of most games if using 4K at high quality settings.
Looking at our Metro: Last Light results then, it’s the start of what’s going to be a fairly consistent streak for the GTX 780 Ti. Though it doesn’t improve on GTX Titan or GTX 780’s gaming performance by leaps and bounds, the additional SMX and increased clockspeeds means that it has little trouble pulling away from those cards and from AMD’s 290 series. As a result the GTX 780 Ti beats the GTX Titan by 11%, GTX 780 by 19%, and though it’s closer than normal, the lead over the 290X stands at 6%.
To that end in Metro it leads the pack of single-GPU cards, though it does come up just short of being able to average 60 frames per second at 2560. Anything over 60fps will require multiple GPUs; and even then GTX 780 Ti is fast enough that sometimes even a pair of GPUs (GTX 770 SLI) isn’t going to be appreciably faster.
Meanwhile looking at GTX 780 Ti SLI performance, the SLI setup tops the charts at 2560 for everything short of the 290X in uber mode, though in this case (like most cases) two high-end GPUs is on the verge of being overkill even at 2560. Otherwise looking at 4K, NVIDIA’s poor 4K scaling on Metro once again makes itself present here, with NVIDIA’s performance only minimally benefitting from the second card. In the case of Metro at 4K, the 290X CF is going to be by far the faster option.
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beck2448 - Tuesday, November 12, 2013 - link
They live in a dream world. Pros buy Nvidia 80% plus. That says everything about quality and reliability.Mondozai - Friday, December 13, 2013 - link
EJS, the buttboy for Nvidia, most sane people are non-fanboys.This means most people, including myself, skipped AMD the last few generations because they did a shitty job. We bought Nvidia hardware instead. Now, the roles will be changed with aftermarket coolers.
Also, please don't talk about mouthbreathers when you're literally chewing cowshit in your mouth everytime you're trying to say something. It stinks.
xdesire - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link
You really don't know what you are talking about. Obviously, R9 290 holds great price/performance value but GTX 780 Ti has great OC potential out of the box. I'm afraid AMD shot themselves on their own foot with this reference coolerGrugtuck - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link
Any reason why the 900000000 pound gorilla in the room isnt mentioned here? 290x spanks the living **** out of the 780i in CF vs SLI. It makes me think that driver issues are still not fully sorted out.Ryan you sound like an absolute idiot when you say that no one is going to need SLI or CF any more. I also think its interesting how these days suddenly 60FPS is the standard to live by when it comes to FPS. I started playing PC games competitively back around 2002 and 80FPS has always been what people shot for, not 60. 60 is the bar min for acceptable smooth play, its not the optimal for competitive or serious FPShooter gaming.
lostsanityreturned - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link
Hmmm I figured I would run a quick bench... my OCed 780 gigabyte with stock cooling gets the same average fps as their OCed 780ti in metro... 67fps 1440p high preset.I imagine it would be even higher if I uninstall comodo (which seems to drop my average fps by 5-14 frames just by being installed even if everything is disabled and profiles are set up correctly to ignore games, goes right back up if uninstalled though)
I hit 77degrees after my third run and it dropped back down to 75 soon after when the fans ramped up again, keeping in mind this is Western Australia I am in currently at 34 degrees (that is 94.2 Fahrenheit), all the windows open and no air-conditioning with an aircooled case.
It isn't even a demanding overclock +161 to core and +189 to memory... which considering I usually run it at +181 and +201 with ease and stability (I turned it down to see what the results were for an easy overclock as they didn't push their 780ti much)
I was feeling like crap about them releasing a new card just 4=5months after I got the 780... now... not so
sf101 - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link
I think obviously people are just irate with Nvidia thinking they can charge premiums on everything and not just small premiums but they seem really set on this +750$ area pricing refusing to cut their customer base a break on the overpricing.So they drop down the 780 GTX to 500$ and everyone cheers "ignorantly" !!! Really its just a smoke screen because they knew the 290 and 290x were out performing their card while running on poor performing cooling units and yet it still has a $100 premium over the 290 which also out runs it pretty much everywhere.
Now down come's the 780TI pooping all over early adopters of the 780 and more so the titan buyers who thought they were getting a flagship card and foolishly paid $1000+ for them.
But its not all bad because heck man performance is performance and the 780ti is obviously needed to keep Nvidia in this race so we all look past its release but can't look past its premium pricing which is just another rip off of the customers @ 150$ over the competitor's pricing which closely competes at lower resolutions and fails to out perform @ 4k and in SLI/crossfire configurations.
Now all that would be just business as usual if Reviewer's were Educating about AMD's crossfire and high resolution performance wins over even the new and improved 780TI.
Instead they are quiet as a mouse to All AMD's Wins aside from pricing because well that's obvious and hard to ignore right. and rip AMD a new one over the downsides aka heat and noise which is totally justified and expected.
While for the nvidia side of things its all Christmas and Win's on the review reading in such a way that the 780ti wins in every category. failing to mention the Wattage use is getting up there as well as heat and fan noise, perhaps not up to 290x height's but much further than the GTX780.
All of these things have been pointed out on other review sites the good and the bad.
FuriousPop - Sunday, November 10, 2013 - link
lol, at the end of the day its all about target marketing.... excluding the fanboys of course. Fanboys = omg its better, faster, cooler oh oh i gotta have it. where as most normal people will analyse the cost of the GPU in relation to its performance to which if applicable to them would do other little upgrades to it/their case if need be, if it all still fits into the equation of how much to spend. etc etcdo your research, read lots of reviews, ask questions(if any) then purchase and don't look back. pretty simple.....
most of you all come here to rage and fire shots to either side (great entertainment btw) reminds me of that Halo Red Vs Blue. more like "fanboys - Red Vs Green" oh hey hey - why Red first eh eh!?
SymphonyX7 - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link
Why exactly would I buy a GTX 780 Ti, when for a $100 more I can get TWO Radeon R9 290s in SLI and get twice the performance? The heat issue is there, but it ain't nothing an aftermarket cooler can't handle like the Accelero Xtreme 3.AMD wouldn't have flinched from the GTX 780 Ti's launch had it not been for their utterly terrible reference coolers.
SymphonyX7 - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link
I meant Crossfire, not SLI. But you get the point. Have you seen those CF 290x vs SLI 780 Ti numbers? That's a ridiculous beatdown.TheinsanegamerN - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link
you know, what i see from this, is that the 290x in uber mode is just as fast as the 780ti in most senarios, and is often a little faster. which should mean that the third party coolers that get slapped on these things should allow the 290x to soundly beat the 780ti. lets get the windforce 3x version of both these cards when they come out, and bench those for a more equal review.